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MH370 family members offer whistleblower reward

ELEANOR HALL: Frustrated family members of some of the passengers on Malaysia Airlines flight 370 are attempting to raise a multimillion dollar reward for anyone who can shed light on the plane's mysterious disappearance.

They have launched a campaign on an online crowd-funding forum, saying they suspect a cover-up over the mid-flight disappearance of the plane three months ago.

The latest information suggested that the plane crashed into the southern Indian Ocean but no wreckage has been found.

Peter Lloyd spoke to Sarah Bajc, whose partner Philip Wood was one of the 239 people on board.

SARAH BAJC: We have to do something. I mean, it's been three months and we know nothing for sure except that the plane lost contact with air control and radar slightly after 1 o'clock.

We don't really know anything else for sure. I mean, everything else that has been put into the search effort so far - so the turn-back is conjecture because nobody has ever provided any proof that it's there, you know, because they don't have any recognition of what airplane that actually was that was tracking back over the country.

And so, if the formal investigation is not moving forward then we need to try something new and so this was the best thing that we could come up with because we're just normal people whose lives have been incredibly disrupted. We don't have resources available to us, either financial or expertise.

So, you know, by crowd-funding an effort and hiring a professional investigation firm to follow up on leads that will hopefully come from a whistleblower who actually knows where the plane is, then we stand a chance of finding it.

PETER LLOYD: So, in a sense, this is not really money for a search; it's money in the hope that it draws out an admission or information from someone who knows something about what you believe is a cover up.

SARAH BAJC: Yeah, the bulk of the funds raised will go to a reward - that is very clear. We are actively soliciting a whistleblower to come forward. I mean we will keep all leads confidential, we will not release the name of the lead provider to the authorities. We will only release the location of the plane once we've been able to identify it.

PETER LLOYD: The certitude that you bring to this conversation suggest either that you believe you have information already and you're using this to draw it out, or that you still have a very clear hope that the plane didn't go down in the Indian Ocean?

SARAH BAJC: I have never believed that the plane went down in the Indian Ocean. There's actually no evidence to tell us that it's there.

We've had people make a case for it, I mean they've made the case of the Inmarsat data, but there's so many holes in that theory as to be not, I mean it's just not believable, it's circumstantial only, and there are things that specifically contradict it.

There is absolute absence of any kind of wreckage. Well, with any plane, I mean even Air France 447 that took them two years to find, we at lease know approximately where it was and there was lots of wreckage that surfaced and it continued to surface for months afterwards on beaches and in fishing nets. So, you know, that is a giant hole in their theory.

Another giant hole in their theory that it's in the southern Indian Ocean is that if it took that flight path it would have flown over Butterworth, which is a military air force base that is staffed not only by Malaysia but also by the UK and Australia and Singapore.

So I just do not believe that an unknown giant aircraft flew over a military base without them doing something about it. So, you know, the theory is just not, it's not well founded. So therefore there must be something else.

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